The document reports on a survey of federal land managers in Colorado, Wyoming, and Utah on climate change adaptation efforts, finding that while there is a mandate for considering climate change in planning, few have actual adaptation plans due to barriers like lack of funding and information as well as conflicting priorities; the managers said species and habitat management was their top challenge and they need local-scale climate impact information the most to aid decision-making.
2. What factors shape
the adaptive capacity
of organizations?
How do decision
processes incorporate
climate-related risk
and opportunity?
How can
information be
more usable in
decision making?
Overarching Motivation:
How can we improve societal outcomes with respect to
climate-related risks?
SPARC/NSF:
- RSD Carbon science
- Science policies for usable
science
- Public lands adaptation
Nat’l climate assessment SH
needs/WWA
CBRFC stakeholder vulnerability
and needs assessment/WWA
USDA:
Public lands and C decision
support tools
Characterizing the carbon
stewardship
landscape/NOAA
Drivers of
Adaptation/NOAA/WWA
SPARC/NSF:
- State governance of
water as adaptive
capacity?
- Public lands management
and adaptation (with
WWA)
Interactions of Drought
and Climate Adaptation –
urban water
management/NOAA
3. slide 3
Mission: To identify and characterize regional vulnerabilities to climate
variability and change and to develop information, products, and processes to
assist decision makers throughout the Intermountain West.
What is the Western Water Assessment?
• Established in 1999 at University of Colorado-
Boulder; one of 11 NOAA-funded RISAs
• Serves stakeholders in Colorado, Wyoming, and
Utah
• Gained particular credibility during focusing event
of 2002 drought
• 20+ researchers with expertise in hydrology,
climate modeling, social science, policy, and law
Current projects include: Snowmelt and Runoff
Processes, Coupled Climate Change-Hydrology
Modeling, Beetles, CBRFC Flow Forecasts, Tribal
Climate Preparedness, adaptation and
cities, ranchers, farmers, TNC
4. slide 4
Federal land manager climate change
adaptation survey
Archie KM, Dilling L, Milford JB, Pampel FC (2012) Climate Change and
Western Public Lands: a Survey of U.S. Federal Land Managers on the
Status of Adaptation Efforts. Ecology and Society 17:art20.
doi:10.5751/ES-05187-170420.
4
5. slide 5
Research Questions
• There is a national federal mandate to consider climate in
federal lands planning, but what does this translate to in
practice in local offices “on the ground”?
• What challenges do Western public lands managers
currently face regarding climate change adaptation?
• What tools / resources do they currently use to obtain
information about climate change? And where do they get
these resources?
• Does demand for information vary among agencies?
5
7. slide 7
Online Survey in 2011
4 agencies: BLM, NPS, USFS, USFWS in three
states, CO WY and UT
Decision Makers – managers, planners etc.
Methods
7
8. slide 8
• 3,100 : 676 responses: 22%
• 58% male, 94% white, 95% bachelor’s degree
• 47% graduate / professional
• 58% Biological sciences
• 47 % work in a field office
• 62% spend more than half their time each week dealing with
land management issues
• 73% say climate change is real and already happening now
• 85% are moderately or well informed about climate change
Demographics
8
9. slide 9
Management Challenges
Top 5
Funding
Species and Habitat Management
Stakeholder Conflicts
Personnel Constraints
Conflicting Mandates
Across Agencies
Species and Habitat Management
Lack of Funding
All say Severe
9
16. slide 16
Conclusions
Little current planning for adaptation
Lack of information is a barrier to planning across public
land agencies,
– but it is not necessarily more important than other barriers i.e.
lack of funding
The scale of useful information is consistent across
agencies,
– but the need for additional information that these scales varies
across agencies.
Lack of public education is seen as a barrier to
implementation
Significance of differences across agencies?
Notas do Editor
We have a long list of research questions – these are the four that I will focus on today. In a nut shell what we really want to know is this: Federal agencies have been tasked with adaptation soAre they planning for adaptation?If not, why? Is it a logistical problem? Not enough money, personnel, too many more pressing priorities…etc. OR is it something else, perhaps an information problem? Clearly scientists produce a vast amount of information about adaptation across a variety of sectors, but is it usable? Is it at the right scale? Is it understandable? Is it available?
Specifically we are focusing on CO, UT and WY - they have large areas of Federal public lands, and the Western Water Assessment based in Boulder has given us funding for our survey and their work focuses on Colorado Utah and Wyoming . The study could be expanded to include other states in the future.
To address these questions we have designed a 39 question online surveyThose who actively make land management decisions or who provide information to those making decisionsPlan to do interviews in the futureconstructed partially from previous surveys with some new material. pre-tested for clarity. administered starting March 9? 2011. human subjects approval. names obtained from public online databases. voluntary etc.
2010 survey of American climate change beliefs showed 57% believed climate change is real, so our population is a bit skewed toward believing in climate change but this is probably related to the high level of education of most of our respondents
Results are preliminary – Asked them first about management challenges without mentioning climate change to see if these answers differed form those w ask later that specifically address adaptation. We had them select which physical / biological challenges and ones we called “other “ challenges that were more social in nature their office faces and then had them rank the top three overall challenges.
X axis # responsesMain themes Information Demand!! 3 of top 5 factors preventing planning for adaptation are information related (good news for scientists!) especially since #1 is a scale question (perhaps the easiest to remedy?) lack of info at relevant scales and uncertainty in available info, lack of useful info (useful info could be scale related as well.)budget too lack of specific agency direction are not areas t hat scientists have any control over, but the information needs can be addressed